Unpacking a Mythology
Coming Soon…
“It was a relief to finally have the story out in the public space,” says Jonathan Crowley, a former assistant teacher in the S. N. Goenka tradition of Vipassana meditation. Referencing his past seven discussions in this ongoing series, he describes the cathartic feeling to finally open up. Here, Jonthan continues his exploration as to how the several years since he left the Organization have reshaped the way he understands his earlier experiences, his critiques of the system, and the developmental process that led him both into and out of a fundamentalist framework.
Jonathan describes how, after the release of the first several episodes, the most common response he received was gratitude from old students who had long lacked “permission” to think critically about the culture and claims of the tradition. Those listeners, he says, felt that the private questions they had carried for years were finally articulated aloud in a space that was neither hostile nor blindly defensive. He says that many wrote to him saying that hearing those conversations allowed them to process experiences that had lingered unresolved, sometimes for decades. Yet when he listens back to those interviews now, what strikes him is not just the content, but the raw state he was in—vulnerable, and still entangled in the emotional currents of leaving a system that had shaped his identity for so long. He remembers how difficult it was even to think certain thoughts at the time, because the interpretive structures of the tradition made some inquiries feel almost forbidden.
As he reflects on his growth since then, he says that the intervening years have been like “peeling layers of an onion,” a gradual uncovering of emotional material that practice had previously encouraged him to bypass. He explains that in the Goenka system, emotions and inner turmoil are framed as manifestations of bodily sensations which should be observed with equanimity, leading many practitioners to treat their emotional life as something to be dissolved through equanimous observation, rather than understood on its own terms or through other methods. In retrospect, he sees this as a kind of spiritual bypassing that he had internalized so deeply he could barely name it at the time of their earlier interviews.
This bypassing, he now argues, rests largely on Goenka’s distinctive interpretation of vedanā. During his years in the tradition, he accepted without question Goenka’s teaching that vedanā refers strictly to physical sensations on the body. The method’s core instruction—observe body sensations with equanimity to dissolve saṅkhāras—presumes that sensations are the primary locus of insight. But when he read more deeply in the Pāḷi Canon and began practicing under a teacher trained in the Pa-Auk lineage, he discovered that vedanā in early Buddhist sources refers to the affective tone—pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral—of all experience, at any sense door, and which notably includes mind. This realization, he says, was “a 180,” because he had long believed that the Goenka system’s narrow description of vedanā was a key aspect of the Buddha’s original teaching.
Circling back to the theme of emotions, he now recognizes how the encouragement of students to almost disassociate from emotional discomfort by equanimous observation of body sensation, in the context of its narrow definition of vedanā, often leads to circumventing painful material rather than understanding it. He feels that this incomplete framework created emotional dysfunction within the organization precisely because students were not encouraged to acknowledge their full emotional reality. “I couldn’t show up as my whole self,” he explains, because any display of strong emotions contradicted the ideal of constant equanimity.
Another doctrinal and practice-related issue he addresses is the technique’s treatment of the body, materiality, and the elements. As he understands it now, the body is not primarily observed through sensations, but the material aggregates as manifestations of the “Four Elements” (as understood in that time): hardness, cohesion, temperature, motion. When he reads early descriptions Sayagyi U Ba Khin’s method, he sees something closer to the framework as described in one of the key Commentarial texts of Theravada orthodoxy, the Visuddhimagga: observing the breath leads to a nimitta (an internal sign signaling increased concentration, often experienced as lights); focusing on the nimitta facilitates deeper absorption; deep absorption enables increasingly subtle perception of the elemental characteristics of matter. He found that what Goenka eventually codified into a course format is oversimplified, and a key element— jhāna— was removed entirely. Jonathan acknowledges that Goenka does speak to the Four Elements in one of his 10-day discourses, but just as an additional description of body sensation; the stress of the practice remains on the arising and passing of body sensations, not on contemplation of the qualities of the Four Elements.
Moreover, Jonathan notes that U Ba Khin taught jhāna and offered detailed one-on-one instruction, whereas Goenka ultimately replaced individualized guidance with tape recorded talks. These departures from his teacher’s method are not problematic in themselves—teachers naturally adapt—but he sees a tension between the adaptations and the rhetoric that asserts that the technique had been preserved unchanged from the Buddha.
This tension would matter less, he adds, if the tradition were not so insulated. He explains that the Goenka organization, while offering many benefits, has not allowed its methods to be evaluated or critiqued by the broader Buddhist world. Its claim to pristine purity, combined with a closed internal structure, encourages a fundamentalist mindset in which alternative interpretations are not considered legitimate. He remembers how difficult it once was even to ask questions, because doing so felt like a betrayal of the path. That environment, he says, fosters rigidity rather than the pliancy of mind that Buddhist practice is meant to cultivate.
A major part of his re-evaluation concerns the purification model. Goenka teaches that saṅkhāras are karmic residues stored in the body and that observing sensations with equanimity gradually “dissolves” them. Crowley once found this model compelling and was particularly taken by the “Sick Ward” sutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya) as supporting this perspective. But then later, when he read this and related texts more closely, he concluded that Goenka’s model is closer to Jain metaphysics than early Buddhism. In the suttas, the elimination of underlying tendencies (anusaya) occurs only through the direct realization of Nibbāna, not through the gradual burning away of stored material. When he read that the Buddha explicitly rejected the Jain idea that suffering could be ended by exhausting old karmic actions, he realized that Goenka’s framework relies on a metaphysical structure not found in the Canonical teachings.
Jonathan does not argue that the method is ineffective, however. Quite the opposite: he repeatedly emphasizes that sitting a ten-day silent retreat and keeping the precepts can be transformative for almost anyone. But he believes that the doctrinal framework Goenka offers to justify the method limits practitioners by restricting what they are allowed to see. If one believes that the root of all suffering can be reduced to bodily sensations and that purification consists of dissolving them through equanimous observation, then entire dimensions of emotional, cognitive, and relational experience remain unexamined. He notes that while students do often emerge from courses more peaceful, more ethical, and more grounded, long-term practitioners who rely exclusively on the method often find themselves stuck when deeper emotional material demands understanding rather than dissolution.
Looking at the vipassana movement from a historical perspective, Jonathan agrees that teachers, scholars, and practitioners have often treated their limited encounters with Burmese traditions as if these represented the entirety of Burmese Buddhism, unintentionally reinforcing simplified narratives. And he appreciates the work of scholars such as Alicia Turner, Gustaaf Houtman, and Matthew Walton who restore Burmese agency and reveal a landscape of practice far more varied than what Western modernist categories have typically allowed. For example, Houtman reveals that the Burmese military regime initially discouraged the teaching of jhāna because it associated meditative powers with potential political threat, but looked at intensive silent retreats as harmless. He also reflects on the way colonialism and Western expectations shaped what Burmese teachers chose to present; in this way, the streamlined methods of both Mahasi Sayadaw and Goenka emerge as products not only of spiritual intention but also of sociopolitical constraints.
All this contributes to how he now understands fundamentalism within the Goenka tradition. He insists that the organization is not coercive or abusive, but that it contains psychological elements characteristic of fundamentalist systems: a certainty rooted in mythic lineage claims, a rigid adherence to fixed interpretations, and a discouragement of critical thought. He stresses that fundamentalism is not primarily a doctrinal problem but a developmental one. People gravitate toward strict systems when they need clarity, stability, and moral safety. He believes his attraction to this framework arose from his own early life experiences—alcoholism in the family, instability, and adversity. The system offered structure, meaning, and belonging at a time when he needed all three.
But development continues, he says, and eventually he outgrew the rigidity that had once protected him. Leaving the tradition required not only intellectual reassessment but emotional reclamation—a willingness to feel what he had long bypassed. He now hopes that conversations like this will help others recognize when their own growth is pressing against the limits of a rigid framework. “The world is messy, and the Buddha-Dhamma is nuanced,” he says, and practice should create minds capable of holding nuance, not minds constrained by fear of questioning.
He ends by again acknowledging the profound value of the ten-day courses and the global reach the tradition has achieved. At the same time, he insists that honoring the good requires seeing the whole picture: its benefits, its inaccuracies, its cultural blind spots, and its fundamentalist tendencies. He hopes for a more open, dialogical future in which practitioners from all traditions can examine practices together, without fear, and without claims to exclusive purity.
We encourage listeners to check out the previous episodes in this series:
Part 1: Jonathan begins by recounting the early stirrings of his spiritual life, shaped by his first encounters with Goenka-style Vipassana. Disenchanted with conventional education and drawn toward a simpler way of being, he describes how his first retreat shattered his assumptions and remade his sense of self — opening a radically different way of seeing his mind and the world.
Part 2: He then turns to the years he spent living and serving at a meditation center. Jonathan reflects on the paradox of the work: the disorientation of dismantling one’s own identity alongside the deep fulfillment of helping others grow. Intensive practice brought insights that felt like peeling back the layers of the self — unsettling but meaningful — all interpreted through Goenka’s distinctive framing of the Dhamma.
Part 3: Jonathan next describes his transition into teaching. Guiding students through transformative inner terrain forced him to confront the complexities of devotion, authority, and identity within the tradition. He emphasizes how teaching can reshape a person as profoundly as meditation itself, revealing blind spots and deepening understanding at the same time.
Part 4: His experiences in Myanmar opened the door to an even wider Buddhist landscape. Immersion in other lineages and cultural expressions challenged the tidy conceptual world he had formed inside the Goenka system. These encounters broadened and enriched his sense of the Dhamma, highlighting both the strengths and the limitations of the framework he had been trained in.
Part 5: Jonathan speaks frankly about the organizational culture within Goenka’s movement: its anti-intellectual bent, its resistance to critique, and its tendency to invoke “ultimate concepts” — such as the purity of the Dhamma — to shut down questioning. This environment, he argues, discourages genuine reflection and makes honest dialogue difficult, even among dedicated practitioners.
Part 6: Jonathan describes the path that led him and his wife, Carolyn, to leave the organization. The breaking point came in 2020, when the tradition’s silence around racial injustice mirrored deeper patterns of avoidance and hierarchy. A thoughtful letter they sent to senior teachers brought almost no response, revealing how closed the system had become. Jonathan shares the grief of leaving a community that shaped his entire adult life, but also the clarity that came as his own practice expanded beyond the system’s constraints. Their departure reflects both disillusionment and gratitude — an acknowledgment that integrity sometimes requires stepping away from what once felt like home.
Part 7: After a break of three years, Jonathan returns to describe a system that gradually narrows a student’s world: discouraging outside study and discussion, elevating a single authoritative interpretation of the Dhamma, and using silence, equanimity, and loyalty to roles as mechanisms that limit agency and exploration. He explains how this structure fosters fundamentalist tendencies — reliance on absolute answers, fear of divergent perspectives, and a resistance to change — while simultaneously bypassing psychological needs by assuming meditation alone will resolve deeper emotional issues. As students advance, positional identity and devotion to the teacher often overshadow genuine development, and the lack of nuanced guidance leaves long-course meditators isolated within a rigid framework. What appears externally as personal practice becomes, internally, a closed system shaped by hierarchical control, unexamined assumptions, and cultural norms that discourage investigation, suppress dissent, and make it difficult for practitioners to step outside the organization’s worldview.